Published in the Irish Independent, Saturday August 9, 2008

If you want to attend a show at the Belarus Free Theatre, first of all you have to find the mobile phone number of their manager. It’s not on the web. It’s not in the phone book. Just ask around until you get it.

Then call the number, and leave a message with your name and number.

The Belarus Free Theatre doesn’t have a permanent home. When they find a venue for their next show, they’ll return your call. They’ll give you a meeting point. One such favoured location is near the cemetery, in Minsk. They have a sense of humour, as well as self-preservation, in the Belarus Free Theatre.

Go there, and wait with the 30 or so other people gathered, until an administrator arrives to guide you to the venue, in small groups.

Bring your passport, or other ID. That way, if you’re arrested, it will be a straightforward matter for the police to identify you, and so you’ll likely be detained only briefly.

You’ll probably end up in a private home, somewhere in the suburbs, or outside Minsk, so the likelihood of being raided will be low. You’ll probably get to enjoy the performance without having a gun pointed at you, being arrested, or risking losing your job. Probably.

The Free Theatre used perform in clubs and restaurants, but had to stop after one of the landlords lost his business. Actors have lost their day jobs. On one occasion, when a group of 15 and 16 year olds attended a play, the police subsequently visited their parents and told them they risked losing their own jobs by letting their children go to the theatre.

On another occasion, the police raided the theatre, bursting in during a performance, with guns, saying they were looking for terrorists. The people they pointed the guns at pointed microphones and cameras back: this was a performance for international journalists, who had come to cover the Free Theatre following reports in the international media of a previous incident when the entire theatre company had been arrested.

Another time, the police raided a performance that was been given to an audience full of children and their mothers. The audience had been briefed beforehand, and they all said the performance was part of the festivities of a wedding.

“It’s pretty complicated to believe it”, admits Natalia Koliada. “But Belarus is a complicated place.”

Natalia Koliada founded the Belarus Free Theatre with her husband, playwright Nikolai Khalezin, in 2005. They had written a play together that had won an international award, but had not been staged in Belarus. The former Soviet-republic has 27 state theatres, but all they do, says Kolyada, is plays about World War II, and fairy tales. Even if they do Chekhov, she says, it is censored. The playwriting couple saw the need for an independent theatre, albeit an underground one, and the Free Theatre was born.

Belarus is regarded by many as Europe’s last dictatorship (in the West, at least; Russia begs to disagree). Alexander Lukashenko has run the country since being elected president in 1994. He increased the power of the presidency in a 1996 constitutional referendum, extended his term of office, and has since been twice re-elected in disputed elections. Amnesty International has raised concerns about state-sanctioned human rights abuses, including the possible disappearance of opposition political figures and arbitrary detention of protestors. Reporters Without Borders, a group that monitors press freedom, ranks Belarus 151st, below Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. So Belarus is not a good place to be outspoken.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the work of the Free Theatre has not been obviously political. Their first production was the late Sarah Kane’s ‘4.48 Psychosis’. That script had no overt bearing on Belarus, but the issues with which it dealt, such as suicide and homosexuality, were effectively taboo. “Any topic you choose will become political in Belarus”, says Natalia Koliada, “because the authorities are afraid of any topic that might destroy the country’s image”.

So how does the company survive? Natalia Koliada has quoted Vaclav Havel to answer this question: “You need to talk loudly and openly if you are to keep safe”, he told her. Havel, whose own work as an underground playwright in the then-Czechoslovakia inspired the Free Theatre, is now a key supporter of the group, who also count Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard amongst their fans, and friends.

How did Tom Stoppard discover them? “We discovered him!” says Natalia Koliada. They obtained an email address for his agent and send a mail saying they would appreciate a letter of support. Fifteen minutes later, they had a reply from Stoppard himself. Was there anything else he could do, he asked. “Could you come and visit us and conduct a meeting?” they wrote. He subsequently spent five days running a workshop with them in Belarus. “We call him our guardian angel”, says Kolyada. Stoppard, and other high-profile supporters, help ensure that the Belarusian authorities remain shy of overt interference in the group, although the “silent repression” of intimidation and forcing people out of their jobs remains constant.

For a few days next week, it’ll be rather easier, and less risky, for Irish audiences to encounter the Belarus Free Theatre. The company is at the Kilkenny Arts Festival (www.kilkennyarts.ie) from Friday to Sunday (15 to 17 August), staging four plays over the three days, each followed by a public discussion. Your passport won’t be necessary.